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The Roman conquest of Hispania, a long process from 218 BC (in the context of the Second Punic War) to 17 BC (already during Emperor Augustus), had three major confrontations regarding modern Portuguese territory:

The Cantabrian Wars from 29 to 19 BC, in the last stade of Roman conquest, that, although not directed at populations in the present Portuguese territory, greatly involved military movements in what is now the north of Portugal.

The Roman republican civil wars that took place, wholly or partially, in Hispania, even if in interaction and connection to the process of conquest, namely:

The Reconquista started as an insurgency in Asturias in 722. Currently Historians and archaeologists generally agree that Northern Portugal, between the Minho and the Douro rivers, kept a significant share of its population, in social and political Christian area that until the late 9th century there were no acting political powers. However, in late 9th century, the region is part of a structure of powers, the Galician-Asturian, Leonese and Portuguese power structures.[1] The county of Portugal slowly grew in power and territory forming a separate Kingdom of Portugal which expanded at the expense of the Moorish states of Al-Andalus, finishing its Reconquista in 1249.

The county of Portugal slowly grew in power and its counts started to style themselves as dukes, one of which became regent of the Kingdom of Leon between 999 and 1008. In 1070, the Portuguese count Nuno Mendes wished the Portuguese title and the Battle of Pedroso was fought on February 18 1071, the count was killed in combat led by Garcia II of Galicia. The later annexed the county and started to styled himself as "King of Portugal and Galicia" (Garcia Rex Portugallie et Galleciae). Garcia's brothers Sancho II of Castille and Alfonso VI of Leon united and annexed Garcia's Kingdom during that same year who agreed to split it among themselves, however the king of Castille was killed by a noble in that same year and Alfonso took Castille for himself and Garcia recovered his kingdom of Portugal and Galicia, but in 1073 the Alfonso VI gathered all power and started to style himself as Imperator totius Hispaniæ (Emperor of All Hispania) since 1077. When the Emperor died, the Crown was left for his daughter Urraca, while Teresa inherited the County of Portugal.

An anachronous map of the Portuguese Empire (1415–1999). Red – actual possessions; Pink – explorations, areas of influence and trade and claims of sovereignty; Blue – main sea explorations, routes and areas of influence. The disputed discovery of Australia is not shown.

Riots of Campo de Ourique and conspiracy of the Marquis of Alorna (1803)[edit]

On 24 and 25 July 1803, in Campo de Ourique, Lisbon, a regiment of infantry commanded by liberal army man Gomes Freire de Andrade and the Legion of Light Troops commanded by the also liberal-leaning Marquis of Alorna mutinied against the state authorities, entering in confrontation with the then recently created Royal Guard of the Police. The end of the mutinies, of forcing political liberalism on Portuguese government, did not succeed.[2]

In 1805, then Princess regent (soon afterwards Queen) Carlota Joaquina promoted a conspiracy in Mafra with the objective of removing her husband Prince João from regency by claiming him to be mentally incapable, assuming regency on her own in his place, being aided in the attempted coup by the Count of Sabugal, the Marquis of Ponte de Lima, the Count of Sarzedas, the Marquis of Alorna and Francisco de Melo. The attempted conspiracy did not succeed, but it did increase the tension between the couple to the point of a divorce or separation being considered, which was never advanced due to the damage that it would bring to the Portuguese state, and the couple still had two children after the attempted conspiracy of Carlota (Maria da Assunção, born in 1805, and Ana de Jesus Maria, born in 1806), although there are suspicions about the possibility of the four children of the couple born after 1801, including the 1802-born Miguel, were not children of João but of one or several of the lovers of Carlota Joaquina).[3]

During the Napoleonic Wars, Portugal was, for a time, Britain's only ally on the continent. Throughout the war, Portugal maintained a military of about 200–250 thousand troops worldwide. In 1807, after the Portuguese government's refusal to participate in the Continental System, French troops under General Junot invaded Portugal, taking Lisbon. However, a popular revolt against Junot's government broke out in the summer of 1808 and Portuguese irregulars took up arms against the French. This enabled a British army under Arthur Wellesley to be landed in Portugal where, aided by Portuguese troops, they defeated Junot at the Battle of Vimeiro; this first French invasion was ended by the Convention of Sintra negotiated by his superiors, which allowed Junot's men to withdraw unmolested with their plunder. Meanwhile, the general revolt against the French in Spain led to the landing of Sir John Moore in the north of that country, forcing Napoleon himself to lead an army into the Peninsula. Though Moore was killed, the British managed to extricate themselves from the Peninsula in the Battle of La Coruña. Portugal itself, however, remained independent of the French, and Napoleon left things in the Iberian Peninsula in the hands of Marshal Soult.

Soult proceeded to invade Portugal in the north. However, the Portuguese held on, giving the British the impetus to send Wellesley back with additional regiments of troops to help recover the Iberian peninsula. Wellesley, aided by the remaining Portuguese regiments hastily scraped together, liberated Portugal. A third invasion took place, led by Marshal André Masséna. The Anglo-Portuguese Army managed to halt the French advance at the fortifications of Torres Vedras and successfully defeat Masséna's troops, and slowly recovered the Iberian peninsula. Wellesley was made Duke of Wellington in recognition of his services. The Portuguese army was put under the command of Marshal Beresford and was most heavily engaged under his leadership in the bloody Battle of Albuera. Portuguese forces also formed part of Wellington's advance into southern France, in 1813–14.

The Setembrizada was the arrest and deportation of a group of personalities connected to the Portuguese Freemasonry, Jacobinist currents and following of the ideals of the French Revolution who had collaborated with the French occupation during the First Invasion, with the first detentions occurring between 10 and 13 September 1810 (hence the name setembrizada), after the entry of the Second Invasion led by general Jean-de-Dieu Soult. By 1814, King João VI gave an amnesty to all the former collaborationists.

On 11 November 1820 (day of St. Martin, hence the name of the revolt, also known in slang as "o imbróglio", "the plot" or "a pavorosa", "the dreadful one"), a group of military leaders known as exaltados (exaulted ones), who challenged the civilian rule in which the 1820 liberal Provisional Junt of Supreme Government of the Kingdom was falling and also what they considered to be the moderate proposals of a constitutional being drawn under influence of the liberal orator Manuel Fernandes Tomás, defending instead the immediate adoption of the Cadiz Constitution or even a more advancedly liberal one. These groups rose up in a paradoxical wide informal coalition with conservative military and politicians and radical bourgeois people. It had a brief success, but by 17 November of the same year a counter-coup restores Manuel Fernandes do leadership of the Junta, forcing some Martinhada leaders, like Gaspar Teixeira de Magalhães e Lacerda, António da Silveira Pinto da Fonseca and Bernardo de Sá Nogueira, forced to exile, and only the sections of the Constitution relating to electoral instructions are adopted, at 22 November 1820, with the first elections after the 1820 Revolution (the elections for the General Extraordinary and Constituting Courts, that is, the Constitution writing constituting assembly) occurring under those instructions between 10 and 27 December 1820.

The Vilafrancada was the first of two uprisings of Prince D. Miguel's uprisings supported by several other people of traditionalist and absolutist leanings, against the liberalism adopted by his father D. João VI in the later phase of his rule.

At 30 April 1824, Prince D. Miguel rose again against his father. The King took refuge abord the British ship Windsor Castle, with aid of the Portuguese diplomatic corp, while grandes of the kingdom like the Duke of Palmela are arrested in Belém, being then moved to imprisonment in Peniche, with the then intendent-general of police Baron of Rendufe being persecuted by the Miguelist rise-up, which then turns its attentions to the Count of Vila Flor (later more famous for its future title of Duke of Terceira) and the Count of Paraty. The reactionary philosopher José Agostinho de Macedo was one of the leaders of the rallying up of support among the masses for the movement, denouncing the prisoners the movement makes at political rallies. At 13 May, D. Miguel was finally forced to leave for exile on board of the frigate Pérola towards France, while in the following day D. João returns to Bemposta, and impeaches the brutal pro-Miguelist Minister of Justice José António de Oliveira Leite de Barros, replacing him by Friar Patrício da Silva, and the Duke of Palmela is risen to Minister of the Kingdom.[5]

In the period of instability after the end of the Portuguese Civil War, several guerrillas happened between pro-governmental and anti-governmental local groups and between local groups and government forces, both by forces of the defeated Miguelites who kept the guerrillas and between different factions of Portuguese liberals. Among these were included:

Guerrilla of Jorge Boto (a Miguelite guerrilla in the Beira Alta region just after the end of the Civil War and also in the last years of given war[6])

Guerrilla of Dom Manuel Martinini (a liberal guerrilla in the last days of the Civil War and first years right after its end led by a former Spanish Army officer around Marvão, Alentejo[7]

Guerrilla of Father Góis (a guerrilla in Alentejo led by Priest Francisco Romão de Góis[9])

Guerrilla of Milhundos (a guerrilla led by Lieutenant Milhundos)

Guerrilla of the Marçais

Guerrilla of the Garranos (one of the many inner Beiras guerrillas in the 1830s and 1840s right after the Civil War)

Guerrilla of the Brandões (the 1834-1869 guerrillas of the Brandão family, first united but soon divided in two branches, the Chartist and the Septemberist one. The most famous leader of the Brandões guerrillas was João Brandão)

Several Miguelite guerrillas throughout Portugal besides the Remexido one, lasting some until the Regeneration Coup of 1850

A conspiratorial movement in Lisbon and Coimbra in August 1848, inspired by the popular and students' uprising of Paris from 22–24 February 1848 (which led to the fall of King Louis Philippe I and the proclamation of the Second Republic). It was controlled by the government of the Duke of Saldanha (with detaining of some of the heads of the conspiracy, the remaining ones falling in clandestinity), with the name by which the conspiracy became known deriving from the term used by Saldanha to define the organization ("revolutionary hydra")[11]

Military instability and coup attempts during the First Republic[edit]

A raid by Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck's remaining troops evaded British troops and managed to penetrate relatively far into Portuguese Mozambique, seizing arms, capturing troops, and sparking unrest among the population (African and European).

Salazar gave material and diplomatic aid to Francisco Franco's nationalist forces while maintaining a formal neutrality. A special volunteer force of 18,000, called Os Viriatos (in honour of Lusitanian leader and Portuguese national hero Viriatus), led by regular army officers, was recruited to fight as part of Franco's army, even if unofficially. When the civil war ended in 1939, Portugal and Spain negotiated the Treaty of Friendship and Nonaggression (Iberian Pact). The pact committed the two countries to defend the Iberian Peninsula against any power that attacked either country and helped to ensure Iberian neutrality during World War II.

Although Portugal proclaimed neutrality in the conflict, the Japanese Imperial Army invaded the Portuguese Timor colony in distant Oceania, killing thousands of natives and dozens of Portuguese. In response, the Portuguese civilians joined Australia, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States against the Japanese. See Battle of Timor.

The Portuguese–Indian War was a conflict with the Republic of India's armed forces that ended Portuguese rule in its Indian enclaves in 1961. The armed action involved defensive action against air, sea and land strikes by a numerically superior Indian force for over 36 hours, and terminated in Portuguese surrender, ending 451 years of Portuguese rule in Goa. Thirty-one Portuguese and thirty-five Indians were killed in the fighting.

Portugal remained steadfastly neutral in World War II, but became involved in counterinsurgency campaigns against scattered guerrilla movements in Portuguese Angola, Portuguese Mozambique, and Portuguese Guinea. Except in Portuguese Guinea, where the revolutionary PAIGC quickly conquered most of the country, Portugal was able to easily contain anti-government forces through the imaginative use of light infantry, home defense militia, and air-mobile special operations forces, despite arms embargoes from other European countries. During the counterinsurgency campaigns in Angola and Mozambique, Portugal was significantly aided by intelligence provided by native residents who did not support revolutionary forces. However, a left-wing military coup in Lisbon by Portuguese military officers in 1974 toppled the Caetano government and forced a radical change in government attitudes. Faced with international condemnation of its colonial policies and the increasing cost of administering its colonies, Portugal quickly moved to grant the remainder of its African colonies independence.

Portugal has also used its naval forces in NATO security operation aimed at combatting piracy in the East African coast. In May 2009, a naval vessel encountered an armed Somali pirate ship and arrested all occupants without any exchange of fire.